Dems Push Health Care Deficit Lie

Jan 5, 2011

RUSH: Here’s the Dana Milbank piece. And, by the way, during the break former Louisiana Senator John Breaux repeated this. Dana Milbank: ‘GOP Congressional Leaders Are Acting A Lot Like Their Predecessors,’ which at the time, of course, remember, now, Milbank loved the Democrat predecessors, loved Pelosi, loved all these Democrats in the House. ‘For incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his House Republicans, something strange happened on the way to Wednesday’s ‘Opening Day’ of the new Congress. For two years, Cantor and his colleagues campaigned against high deficits. Now, in the new majority’s first major act, they plan to vote to increase the deficit by $143 billion as part of a repeal of health-care reform.’ So here’s this template now that Obamacare is going to cut the deficit. Obamacare is going to save money, $143 billion. See how this works? The Republicans, by repealing it, are gonna add 143 billion to the deficit, and yet they’re big spending hawks.

John Breaux, just being interviewed by Fox, the question of the day, ‘What do you think they have to do here to get along?’ Breaux said, (imitating Breaux) ‘Well, you know, the most important thing here is, if you’re a Democrat, reach across the aisle. Republican, establish relationships, vice-versa. ‘Cause oftentimes those relationships are more important than anything else that will happen in the House or in the Senate. By the way, even after doing that, the Republicans, I don’t understand it, I mean they say that they’re gonna cut, deficit spending, but the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan –‘ he made a point of saying nonpartisan ‘– Congressional Budget Office said that Obamacare, save $143 billion of the deficit. I don’t know how the Republicans are gonna square this, but that’s part of working together.’ So the template’s there. And plus the debt ceiling and all this, all of this is predictable, folks. I’m trying to funny. I’m not outraged by it. This is who they are. Just illustrating it and pointing out. The last thing that they care about is working together or getting along or anything of the sort. Not even one syllable of truth comes out of these people’s minds today.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, some days this stuff bores the hell out of me, I have to be honest. Some days it fascinates me. And today it mostly fascinates me ’cause I remember we had the story, the Democrats made a tactical decision not to say Obamacare will lower the deficit. As they were moving toward trying to get this thing voted on and passed, strategists were telling the Democrats to drop this claim that Obamacare would lower the deficit because nobody believed it. They were doing focus groups and polls. Nobody believed it going into the final stretch of the 2008 campaign. And Eric Cantor said you got ten years of tax increases, you got six years more in ongoing benefits. Of course it makes it look like the reform lowers the deficit. On top of that, Ryan said that they were double counting revenue in that televised meeting with Obama on the health care summit was total hooey. If you remember, the CBO’s financial estimate on the whole thing was based on new taxes included in the health care bill. If the bill is repealed, those taxes go away.

Now, this whole business of $143 billion saved, Obamacare saves $143 billion, that figure was obviously made up out of whole cloth just to give cover to members of Congress. Even Pelosi said they’re gonna have to pass the bill to find out what was in it, and it was in her bill. So how on earth could the CBO be expected to project how much it was gonna cost? They just made it all up. Remember, the magic number was one trillion. They had to keep the cost under one trillion, otherwise they thought they’d lose the PR battle. Yeah, they played all kinds of games. Everybody knew the smoke and mirrors. Why do 65% of the American people oppose this? Because they know it’s all a lie. And so now all of a sudden when the debt ceiling is the subject again and deficit spending and getting it under control, all of a sudden now we’re back to this thing the Democrats wanted no part of in the first place, was that Obamacare is going to reduce spending, and it’s going to reduce the news. I mean even the CBO, folks, admitted that the only way the health care bill would save money was if the health insurance penalty or tax was really high.

You know the requirement that you pay 15% or more of your income for health insurance or go to jail? That’s the single most hated provision in the bill, it’s almost certainly unconstitutional, to say nothing of other aspects of it. I’m glad they waited ’til I get back to start trying these tricks. I really am. It’s probably very boring for people, not just this audience, very boring for everybody in the news cycle when I’m not here, because none of this stuff happens. Sometimes big, worldwide events take place, but I mean the normal hustle bustle day to day stuff sort of takes a break.